Leaders seek to finish Pacific trade deal this year

Leaders of the 12 countries negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership pact on Tuesday set a goal of finishing the ambitious regional trade agreement this year, requiring governments to make tough decisions in coming months to open long-protected markets in areas ranging from agriculture to manufacturing to services.

“Our countries are on track to complete the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations,” the leaders said in a joint statement issued at a regional summit meeting, in Bali.

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U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry sat in at the meeting for President Barack Obama, who stayed in Washington because of the government shutdown. The other 11 countries include Japan, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Peru, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam and Brunei. Together, the group represents nearly 40 percent of the global economy and one-third of world trade.

U.S. trade officials for months have touted the Bali summit as an important milestone on the road to completing the more than three-and-a-half year old TPP talks in 2013 and said leaders would hash over tough trade-offs to guide negotiators in reaching the final agreement.

The statement that emerged from the meeting refers to “significant progress” made in recent months on market access issues, services, investment, financial services, government procurement and temporary entry of workers. But it is mostly descriptive of the state of the talks and gives no indication of what concessions individual countries are willing to make to reach a deal.

It also stops short of saying a deal is essentially complete, as some expected ahead of the meeting. But it does set a goal of finishing the negotiations this year, an advance over the November 2011 leaders statement which promised to “dedicate the resources necessary to conclude this landmark agreement as rapidly as possible.”

Critics of the trade deal already are seizing on the comments as a negative sign.

“That the leaders have admitted that there is no deal nor a clear path to obtaining one this year, despite the hype built up pre-summit, reveals the growing domestic political blowback against the TPP that leaders are now trying to manage,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, a leading critic of trade deals, in a statement.

There was no mention in the leaders statement, or in a separate report of TPP trade ministers, of the possibility of negotiating rules against currency manipulation, a priority for many members of Congress who will have to vote to approve any deal. The Obama administration has been cool to the idea, which also faces resistance from other TPP members.

Some business groups have been concerned about the push to finish the talks this year, fearing that the Obama administration’s desire to craft groundbreaking rules in areas like protection for workers and the environment would make it harder to get meaningful new commercial opportunities from the pact and to forge strong rules for intellectual property rights protection and the operation of state-owned enterprises.

Every country has its sensitive issues in the negotiations including the United States, which is under pressure in the talks to open its protected sugar, dairy and textile markets to more imports in exchange for tough demands it is making on trade partners. U.S. auto makers also are concerned about opening the U.S. market to more cars from Japan and have been vocal in demanding rules against currency manipulation to help thwart that.

“The final stage of the TPP talks will require an intensification of effort at all levels to find creative, pragmatic and flexible approaches to resolve outstanding issues, as well as an unwavering commitment to the high-standard, ambitious outcome that the TPP leaders, and indeed, your ministers and negotiators, seek,” the TPP ministers said in their report to leaders.

The TPP leaders meeting took place at the annual summit of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation, which brings together 21 economies including China and Russia. Obama also skipped last year’s APEC meeting because he was campaigning for re-election.

The TPP pact is meant to be a living agreement that eventually could expand to all 21 members of APEC.